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Blizzard Continue Cutting Features from Diablo 3 (This Time PvP)

The Diablo 3 release date drama continues today with news that Blizzard are removing PvP so they can get the game out the door quicker. With Diablo 3 having been in development for six years now, it’s quite amazing that this is now being removed and was not nailed down, despite being shown at numerous Blizzcons. Blizzard’s Mike Morhaime has stated in the past that the game will ship “when it is ready”, but judging by this latest announcement, the game is not ‘fully’ ready so instead they are cutting features to make it “ready”.

Blizzard has stated that PvP will come in the future but there is no indication when. Jay Wilson added today that PvP will come with ”multiple Arena maps with themed locations and layouts, PvP-centric achievements, and a matchmaking system”, but surely this should have all been done in time for launch?

As we’re counting down the days until we’re ready to announce a release date for Diablo III, we’ve come to realize that the PvP game and systems aren’t yet living up to our standards. Today, we wanted to let you know that we’ve made the difficult decision to hold back the PvP Arena system and release it in a patch following the game’s launch. After a lot of consideration and discussion, we ultimately felt that delaying the whole game purely for PvP would just be punishing to everyone who’s waiting to enjoy the campaign and core solo/co-op content, all of which is just about complete.

While we work on making sure PvP lives up to its full potential, we hope you’ll find some consolation in the fact that soon, you’ll be having a blast leveling characters, finding items, learning the classes, and perfecting builds…and that when the Arenas do arrive, you’ll be all the better prepared for battle.

When the PvP patch is ultimately ready, it will add multiple Arena maps with themed locations and layouts, PvP-centric achievements, and a matchmaking system that will help you and your team get into fairly matched games quickly and easily. We’ll also be adding a personal progression system that will reward you for successfully bashing in the other team’s skulls.

We know a lot of you are looking forward to PvP, and we’ll be focusing our post-launch efforts on making sure the Arenas are as brutal, bloody, fast-paced, and awesome as we know they can be. In the meantime, we’re in the process of putting the finishing touches on what we think is a truly epic campaign and co-op experience for launch.

We’ll have a lot more info to share on the PvP system in the future, and we look forward to the moment we can get the game into your hands.

Blizzard is the kind of company that won't release something unless it's near perfect. I don't see this as a sign that there are troubles at blizzard as you are quick to imply. It's a sign that they aren't happy with the PVP they designed and don't want to delay the game any further.

It's a good thing, unless you are a fan of game companies that released unfinished pieces of crap on a regular basis.

Blizzard is the kind of company that won't release something unless it's near perfect. I don't see this as a sign that there are troubles at blizzard as you are quick to imply. It's a sign that they aren't happy with the PVP they designed and don't want to delay the game any further.

It's a good thing, unless you are a fan of game companies that released unfinished pieces of crap on a regular basis.

If this was the old Blizzard, this game would've got cancelled and gone back to the drawing board about three months ago.

So, yes, it's a sign of troubles at Blizzard, no matter how you look at it.

I geuss they are having the same problems that Valve and GDC gameworld had - the wish to release the perfect game, and their ambitions wildly exceeding their actual capabilities. It is weird that a company as experienced as blizzard would fall for it, though.

So, yes, it's a sign of troubles at Blizzard, no matter how you look at it.

Not necessarily. As Hyper says, Blizzard are quite big on the perfectionism, this could just be a part of their normal process. The redundancies you mentioned where to do with WoW and customer support, so not directly linked to Diablo 3. The Senior producer leaving was an amicable decision (he wasn't cutting and running, just moving on - though you made a thread about that, repeatedly trying to make out as if he had been forced out and was slating those that were left). And as for retooling the game... That's what happens during Betas, and with it being Blizzard, they aren't just going to tweak a few values, balance a feature or two... they are going to make sweeping changes, iterate over a long period of time, and take difficult decisions, even if it means delaying the game.

It might be a sign of troubles, but it isn't necessarily so. I don't think we should be jumping to conclusions and forecasting their imminent failure any time soon.

Last edited by Unaco; 10-03-2012 at 12:00 PM.

Originally Posted by Hypernetic

I just have an opinion different to your own. Circle jerking is good for no one, be glad somebody isn't afraid to disagree with women on the internet.

Agree with Grizzly seems very odd that a huge experienced company like Blizzard is redesigning major features this late into game development. I'd be very interested to know why this happened. As for Blizzard being in trouble, I do not think so. They could cancell Diablo III right now, dump all the work they have done and when the shareholders complain they would just point to WoW. You do have to admire their dedication to quality however and frankly I would rather they take the resources from WoW and put it towards quality than regular releases and a steady stream of income.

With the reduction of their WoW subscriptions, I think they're starting to hurt, as they've grown into a monsterous company during the stage of living 'in the fat' of the 12 million WoW subs. I would personally like to see the company downsize itself, reset all of its goals, release Starcraft 2 expansions, and then see where to go from there. If they don't rethink their system, they're going to have some issues. People are actually starting to compete with them, and it's not looking good for them.

Not to say that they don't still put out high quality games, by the way, I just think that their mentality is still 'we're the best in PC gaming'. It reminds me somewhat of Sony and the fact that they always think that they are better, which is screwing them over because they won't change their marketing.

Gotta be fluid in today's economy, and I don't know if Blizzard has the business sense (we all know that they have a good gaming sense) to keep up, honestly. It should prove interesting.

If this was the old Blizzard, this game would've got cancelled and gone back to the drawing board about three months ago.

How old? Because they launched WoW without PvP too.

Incidentally, imagine if they never announced PvP to start with, then bought it out as a patch later on (the sort of thing 'old Blizzard' might have done). It'd been decried as a Pay-To-Win money-grab because of the auction house system...

Nah, this doesn't seem like that big a deal. It's very difficult to make both PvE and PvP work with the same systems, especially when a game is so heavily slanted one way or the other to begin with. The Diablos have a very large PvE emphasis. If they have some tough design decisions to make regarding how PvP works it's much better to do it in the studio before people get accustomed, because even broken PvP systems are hard to change in a released product without irritating your player base.

It'll be better for those interested in PvP in the long run to get something that has had the creases ironed out before it gets to them.

Sounds like they painted themselves in a corner here, where they promoted and marketed D3 out the wazoo and then found they couldn't deliver. I'm surprised, tho, that they couldn't predict the waning of WoW subscriptions. After all, wasn't Titan supposed to be the inevitable WoW replacement? Where's Titan?

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Sounds like they painted themselves in a corner here, where they promoted and marketed D3 out the wazoo and then found they couldn't deliver. I'm surprised, tho, that they couldn't predict the waning of WoW subscriptions. After all, wasn't Titan supposed to be the inevitable WoW replacement? Where's Titan?

I'm fairly sure they predicted it, I think they were just a little off on the severity of it.

I have to say I agree with R-F in this instance. I know you can't reason with fanboys, but the amount of trouble they seem to be having publicly with Diablo 3 makes me think that behind the scenes things really aren't going well for them at all.

Not that I care - the Diablo games are so damn vapid that I'll be steering well clear of 3. Addictive, huge timesinks and you don't feel like you've gotten anything worthwhile out of it (which could be an argument against gaming in general, but for me is only true of MMOs, competitive MP and a few other SP games such as Diablo).

Removing features that rely upon online connectivity only makes their stance on the issue more enraging. If you cannot have an appreciable advantage over other players--since now you can only work with them and never directly against them--then what is the justification for regulating mods and characters so much?

It all comes back--as it always does--to their Real Money Auction House. Even though the only achievement is to beat an NPC, players still can't be allowed even the slimmest possibility of cheating or avoiding the AH, as it threatens Blizzard's slice of the pie.

Incidentally, imagine if they never announced PvP to start with, then bought it out as a patch later on (the sort of thing 'old Blizzard' might have done). It'd been decried as a Pay-To-Win money-grab because of the auction house system...

I'm not talking about the PvP, to be honest. Just... EVERYTHING. The game's a mess design-wise, they're doing everything they can to grab some quick cash and it's really breaking up the game. WoW went through about three successive iterations pre-vanilla release, two in the design stage and one MASSIVE overhaul of gameplay in closed beta.

I mean, look at Lord of the Clans and Starcraft Ghost. Both of those were hugely anticipated and awesome, but ultimately we didn't get them because they just didn't work like Blizzard wanted them to. Diablo 3 should be in the same boat, but Activision is just milking Blizzard's loyal customers for all their cash at the minute so it doesn't really matter.

Given how long the game's been in development accusing them of going for quick cash seems a touch odd. As far as the things I saw and read about the last indicated things seem in pretty good shape. Blizzard are known perfectionists, and given this I think it's reasonable to assume they want to keep things in house until some design issues have been worked out. It's very difficult to polish a game of this size and scope, after all.